French right picks leader after election chaos

Angelique Chrisafis

Jean-Francois Cope is congratulated by campaign team member Luc Chatel after the announcement of his victory in the UMP leadership battle. Photo: AFP

Paris: Jean-Francois Cope has defeated the former prime minister Francois Fillon by a handful of votes to take the helm of France’s right-wing UMP party.

The firebrand Mr Cope took 50.03 per cent of the vote, edging Mr Fillon by just 98 votes to succeed the former president Nicolas Sarkozy, the party’s internal electoral commission said on Monday. Mr Cope promptly invited Mr Fillon to work with him.

The vote had turned into a shambles on Sunday night after both candidates declared themselves the winner amid a vicious public slanging match over dodgy ballots, trickery and fraud.

In the worst party political mayhem in recent French memory - even more savage than the famous infighting in the Socialist Party - the right was temporarily left in paralysis as the different teams of the two self-declared leaders tore into each other on live television. French media described the electoral chaos as ‘‘surreal’’.

More than 50 per cent of the 300,000 members of the UMP party turned out to vote for a new leader on Sunday following Mr Sarkozy’s defeat in the presidential election in May.

During a long and bitter election campaign, Mr Cope, 48, a tough-talking hardliner, had played to the far-right audiences, saying French city suburbs brimmed with ‘‘anti-white’’ racism and that the right must take to the streets to oppose Socialist President Francois Hollande.

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He said: ‘‘I am the tenant of a right which does not have hang-ups, which tells the truth and is comfortable with itself.’’

Francois Fillon, 58, Sarkozy’s former prime minister, depicted in the press as a mild-mannered provincial gentleman, styled himself as more moderate and conciliatory, promising to ‘‘unite’’ the party. Fillon repeatedly scored higher in popularity polls among the general public.

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But the party was left confused and damaged on Sunday when the voting booths closed and both camps immediately made accusations of ballot fraud, trickery and irregularities, lodging complaints with the party’s internal election monitoring body.

Amid this confusion, France was astonished to see Mr Cope hastily take to the stage in front of live television cameras and announce that he had won, in a rapidly delivered victory speech in which he vowed to work ‘‘hand-in-hand’’ with the loser.

Minutes later, an incensed and shocked-looking Mr Fillon took to the stage at his headquarters to announce that he himself had won by a small margin, and that voters should now await the officially announcement of the results by the party’s internal commission. ‘‘I will not let party members’ victory be stolen from them,’’ he said.

Key members of both camps rushed to TV studios and proceeded to savage each other live on camera, each insisting they had won.

I am the tenant of a right which does not have hang-ups, which tells the truth and is comfortable with itself.

Jean-Francois Cope

The party’s internal electoral commission has yet to pronounce on the alleged voting irregularities.

The election night chaos threatenend to damage hugely the party created 10 years ago by Jacques Chirac, and which had always been in power until, in recent months, it lost the Senate, then the presidential election, then the parliamentary elections.

Florian Philippot, of the far-right Front National, which has directly targeted UMP voters, described the election night as something ‘‘between Dallas and a Punch and Judy show’’.